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Tuesday, November 25, 2008

New Bilvavi Shiur on Tznius Now Online

The first shiur that the author of the Bilvavi Mishkan Evneh seforim gave in his new monthly series of shiurim on Tznius is now online. The shiur was entitled "Tznius From Another Angle," and was given at Cong. Aish Kodesh in Ramat Beit Shemesh, as I posted here.

In the shiur, he prefaced the discussion of tznius with an understanding of the difference between focusing on chitzonius versus focusing on pnimius (externality versus internality).

In the course of the discussion, he told over a funny m'aseh that illustrated the point. He told over that at one point, the Gerer Rebbe was upset that people were being badly influenced by reading secular newspapers in Israel. So he encouraged the starting of the Israeli version of the Hamodia newspaper. As part of his efforts, he encouraged his chassidim to subscribe to the Hamodia.

There was one man who would get his copy of Hamodia, and as soon as he got it, he would throw it in the garbage immediately. At one point, he asked the chassid why he was throwing away the paper instead of reading it. The man responded that the Rebbe had told them to subscribe to the paper. He didn't say anyting about actually reading it!

With this illustration of superficial thinking, and many great teachings, the Rav introduced us to the topic of tznius, focusing on the internal, and not on the superficial.